This study examined the frequency of this variant among cases of colorectal cancer vs. controls and found no significant difference. When individuals were split according to alcohol consumption (<1 drink/day vs. >= 1 drink/day) the variant had a weakly protective effect in individuals with low alcohol consumption, p=0.04.

If 2% of deaths are attributable to colorectal cancer, we estimate that based on these numbers that carriers with low alcohol consumption have ~0.5% attributable decreased risk for each copy of the variant.